Dumbest thing you had to do in the Military?

[wyld3man]

Oh, the dumbest thing of all isn't really funny, but SPENDEX. Blowing ammo through barrels as fast as you can just so they can order the same amount next year. Instead of training all year with it, it's all just blown in one big "spending exercise" where you stay at the range until it's all gone. What a fucking waste, and they don't do or say one damn thing about the shot out barrels they get out of this.

Unfortunately that is too common. I won’t take part in a spendex, neither will any of my guys. Last time I had someone tell me we had to go to the range and shoot a ton of ammo and get 0 training value but gain shot out barrels, I explained my point of view to them. The only reason that happens is the ammo requests were forecasted without a realistic training plan. Then at the end of the fiscal year the unit is stuck with a bunch of ammo, that can be turned in. The only issue with that is the unit is scared that it will effect their allotment for the next fiscal year. I have two things to say about that, prove it and if it is so then the ammo is obviously not needed so who cares.

Dumbest thing I did was edge a mile of sidewalk with a tent stake when there was a shovel available. The dipshit in charge wouldn’t let me use it, and I was not even in trouble, he was just being a prick.

 

[Slash0311]

Stand in a field wearing miles gear, in a lightning storm. Took over a hour to get four platoons miles gear shut off with the God gun.

Help my CO to a cab after he got pepper sprayed by the bouncer atva strip club in Jacksonville outside Camp LeJeune.

Was in the field for the last night of a big eval exercise. Me and the other Squad Leaders hatched a plan. Company was in a defensive perimeter with 25% watch. Officers knew when the OpFor attack was coming but we were awake and bored... bad Juju, for them. I "thought I saw movement." I popped a 203 flare. Squad of M60's opens up and all hell broke loose. Took about 10 minutes to get everyone to stop firing.

Can we go into stories of watching drunks? Or maybe drunk military stories should be a thread of its own...

 

[TheBigCountry]

Stand in a field wearing miles gear, in a lightning storm. Took over a hour to get four platoons miles gear shut off with the God gun.

Help my CO to a cab after he got pepper sprayed by the bouncer atva strip club in Jacksonville outside Camp LeJeune.

Was in the field for the last night of a big eval exercise. Me and the other Squad Leaders hatched a plan. Company was in a defensive perimeter with 25% watch. Officers knew when the OpFor attack was coming but we were awake and bored... bad Juju, for them. I "thought I saw movement." I popped a 203 flare. Squad of M60's opens up and all hell broke loose. Took about 10 minutes to get everyone to stop firing.

Can we go into stories of watching drunks? Or maybe drunk military stories should be a thread of its own...

I can remember a drunk night outside Lejeune where a drunk buddy of mine almost got us jumped by 4-5 locals...I still don’t know what the hell he did but it went from 0-60 real quick and it took some major verbal judo to diffuse and get us the hell out of there (I’m 90% certain to this day those boys were packing)

Or when the Major started a forest fire firing off a pop-flare during a night land nav session and we all had to GTFO. Watching that sucker run through the NODS and telling the Major we needed to get out ASAP was a fun one

 

[SuckitTrebek]

Forgotten about doing a greater amount of dumb shit than all the dumb shit I can actually remember having to do.

 

[Fig]

Everything I did and was asked to do was fucking brilliant. Non geniuses were the exception.

 

[Slash0311]

I just remembered "E-tool qualifications". Went like this...

Once in the field, new Marines would have to be E-tool qualified. We'd get a range NCO, an E-tool with the blade at 90 degrees to the handle, a quarter, and stump or log.

New Marine would kneel near the stump and be told to raise the E-tool overhead and slam it down trying to split the quarter. One attempt would be without a blindfold. After that fit hit, all tries would be blindfolded. The range NCO would remove the new Marine's cover and tie the blindfold. Then, as the E-tool was brought overhead, their cover would be put over the quarter causing them to chop the shit out of their cover.

Happened to me when I was getting a promotion and I had to use the range NCO's cover for the promotion ceremony.

 

[JimLee]

That pair of panties some slut left in your barracks...better fucking be in inspection order.

 

[Matches Malone]

one of our Marines lost his NVGs before we were pushing out to our PB. After all was said and done I think he lost them in the porter shitter. Anyways we had to "look" for them for 9 hours scaouring our lot, shifting to the porter shitter...yes...in the shit... got our bags tossed, vics tossed, gear tossed etc. Just to never find them. Because the afghan shitter steve had already dumped the shitter when this dude got around to telling someone he was missing his shit.

another notable waste was when one of my boots pissed me off and i had him sweep the outside around the shop in one of those typical 29 palms sand storms.

 

[WATERWALKER]

I remember one of my platoon Sergeants asking us “Does anyone know how to clear multiple rows of concertina wire?” I was a fire team leader & I mentioned using wire cutters. This dumbass E-6 says “No.”. He explains that he’s going to open a flak jacket as wide as possible & dive on the concertina wire, thus creating a hole. Everyone else he says, will then run or jump over him. He borrows a flak jacket & runs toward the concertina wire & dives on top of it.

Immediately our plt sergeant starts screaming. Our corpsman races to him & has to cut a large piece of razor out of his face. This large piece of steel entered just below his eye & exited just to the outside of his eye. No loss of sight or permanent injury, but really, who didn’t see that coming?

 

[Sean the Nailer]

I remember one of my platoon Sergeants asking us “Does anyone know how to clear multiple rows of concertina wire?” I was a fire team leader & I mentioned using wire cutters. This dumbass E-6 says “No.”. He explains that he’s going to open a flak jacket as wide as possible & dive on the concertina wire, thus creating a hole. Everyone else he says, will then run or jump over him. He borrows a flak jacket & runs toward the concertina wire & dives on top of it.

Immediately our plt sergeant starts screaming. Our corpsman races to him & has to cut a large piece of razor out of his face. This large piece of steel entered just below his eye & exited just to the outside of his eye. No loss of sight or permanent injury, but really, who didn’t see that coming?

What page of the training manual was THAT one in? I know WWI and WWII movies showed such, but they also showed Bangalore Torpedo's, too.

 

[WATERWALKER]

I knew this response was coming, LOL. If it were a time of war I could certainly see it happening. This was after eating chow, sitting on our packs & doing nothing. An impromptu class on breaching wire.

I’d certainly agree that clearing wire w/ a Bangalore torpedo would be optimal, but this scenario was three strands of wire & getting through. Sorry, I should’ve been more clear in context.

 

[Fig]

That probably wins unless someone has a story where a Sgt. demonstrated a catastrophic reserve chute failure.

Speaking of the training manual...
I don't think I've got anything quite that dumb, but I did have a Chief put us in the Chesapeake Bay, in January, in just UDT shorts to, "Teach you what it feels like". The manual requires a shorty wetsuit in water temps below 25c, and in water that cold it REQUIRES a dry suit. He had us run in, dunk our heads, and run out. It didn't even feel cold. It was just raw, from your toes to your teeth, pain.

 

[DOA]

Rake the “grass” at 29Palms when in actuality was just dirt. That an saluting officers. Fuck that. I got in more trouble not saluting officers than anything else but they didn’t do shit because I was always up for meritorious promotions.

 

[bigdaddydmd]

Watched a couple of my soldiers try and navigate thru a 10 row concertina wire roadblock. Smart boys built it from the nearside to the far side over a two lane vehicle bridge and once they were done realized they were stuck on the far side of the obstacle. Rather than hump the long way around or cross the creek a couple got the smart idea that they could balance beam their way thru it on the row of concrete dividers that separated the two lanes. It went down as exactly as you imagine. One made it across. The next wasn't' the most graceful and happened to be the E5 in charge of the team that built it backwards in the first place. He got about halfway, teetered back and forth and did the most amazing back flop into the wire once he lost his balance. It took us a while to cut thru that damn thing and get him out. some lacerations but nothing major or life threatening. His IBA and ACH took most of the damage, but damn was he caught up. Best part is I have it all on video.

Dumbest thing I ever had to do was sit on an OP at Yakima Training grounds and watch the impact range fire burn itself out over the course of 24 hrs. I may or may not have been the one responsible for starting the fire in the first place. Was supposed to do a coordinated illum/HE mission that night but used up all the HE during the morning fulfilling call for fire training with the scout sniper platoon. Had 6 illum rounds left that were opened and couldn't be returned. In a lapse of judgment as a young 1LT I didn't want to sit on a firing point for the whole day in the summer just to drop 6 illum rounds at night for zero training since the scouts had already headed back to post. I may or may not have decided that firing the illum at 1300 was a great idea, but knew the old man was out and about so came up with the brilliant plan to crank the timers so they didn't pop until after they had impacted the dirt so he wouldn't see them floating down in the middle of the day. Who knew that cranking the timer all the way over on 81mm illum rounds and them not igniting until they were well into the dry grass of the impact range would start a fire? Sitting on the OP watching a fire while all the other boys got to drink beer in the rear was a well deserved punishment so I can't say its the dumbest thing I ever did, but the way I ended up sitting on that OP is the dumbest thing I ever did in the military.

 

[Bayoubigcat]

Roommate got the platoon in trouble. We all went to base Maint and grabbed all the lawn equipment they had and started cutting grass at Camp Del Mar. Weed eater I had was broken...told the Plt Sgt it didn’t work but still had to put my goggles on and run that bitch for 8 hours with no string on it.

 

[Greg Langelius *]

On my return home from 'Nam, I ended up at MCS Quantico for the remaining few months of my enlistment.

It snowed, and unsurprisingly, nobody knew how to deal with it on base.

I was assigned to stand in the bed of a 5 ton dump truck full up with salt with another Marine, and shovel the salt over the tailgate while the truck ran along the base roads.

Not lyin'...

Greg

 

[THEIS]

Hi,

Dumbest thing I had to do while in Military.....The Command Master Chiefs daughter.

Sincerely,
Theis

 

[oneshot86]

oh you showoff bastard

lol

 

[BountyHunter]

Hi,

Dumbest thing I had to do while in Military.....The Command Master Chiefs daughter.

Sincerely,
Theis

Now that one reminds me of an incident. I was the BN SDO and walked thru my units barracks to 2nd floor
The line outside a door scattered. I entered the room to discover the base Commanders 16 year old daughter ( one of set of identical twins both 11s on the scale) and 3 guys and they were not remotely the firsts. They "wilted" on the spot. It got real interesting from there when the Co Cdr, Bn Cdr and Base Cdr all showed up. Thankfully I had her showered and cleaned up before her father got there. Not surprisingly, he did not want a duty log entry made and no one got charged but the 1SG sure had fun with a number of then the next month!

 

[jrassy]

Our company was doing mountain warfare training in Bridgeport we rode some 6 bys up into the mountains, it started to snow, we dismounted and started humping up the mountains, it kept snowing, we kept humping up. Finally the word was passed to stop, there was a good 2 feet of fresh snow on the ground, the word to spread out was passed but not to hunker down or set up a perimeter, just spread out and stand there for hours, while the brain tried to figure out what to do.
We stood for hours, morning broke and we're still standing, no winter gear,leather boots, frozen. 2/3rds of the Company were medivaced with frost bite, the Huey's were amazing to watch.

The rest of us dumb bastards were assembled into 2 lines, faced each other,sat down on our packs, ordered to take our boots and socks off and rub each other's feet.

Then we put on a pair of dry socks,wet boots and humped down to the camp and got issued cold weather gear.

And I went into the Marines guaranteed infantry.

 

[Crittermenot]

Spend hours searching for a missing thumb which was obviously turned into pink mist. That's what happens when 41's let a radio operator drop some rounds without basic instruction.